I consider biennial elections as a security that the sober, second thought of the people shall be law.

Fisher Ames, speech on Biennial Elections before the Convention of Massachusetts (January 1788), reported in Seth Ames, John Thornton Kirkland, Works of Fisher Ames with a Selection from His Speeches and Correspondence (1854) p. 7.

I would relate to the crowds how I called on a certain rural constituent and was shocked to hear him say he was thinking of voting for my opponent. I reminded him of the many things I had done for him as prosecuting attorney, as county judge, as congressman, and senator. I recalled how I had helped get an access road built to his farm, how I had visited him in a military hospital in France when he was wounded in World War I, how I had assisted him in securing his veteran's benefits, how I had arranged his loan from the Farm Credit Administration, how I had got him a disaster loan when the flood destroyed his home, etc., etc.
"How can you think of voting for my opponent?" I exhorted at the end of this long recital. "Surely you remember all these things I have done for you?"
"Yeah", he said, I remember. But what in hell have you done for me lately?"

Alben W. Barkley, That Reminds Me— (1954), p. 165. Barkley first told this story during his 1938 campaign for renomination as Kentucky's Democratic candidate for the United States Senate.

VOTE, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1948), p. 359. Originally published in 1906 as The Cynic's Word Book.

How shall we avert the dire calamities with which we are threatened? The answer comes from the graves of our fathers: By the frequent election of new men. Other help or hope for the salvation of free government there is none under heaven. If history does not teach this, we have read it all wrong.

Jeremiah S. Black, "The Third Term: Reasons Against It"; first published in The North American Review (March 1880); republished in Chauncey F. Black, ed., Essays and Speeches of Jeremiah S. Black (1886), p. 383.

What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man; and then you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation or dependence.

Edmund Burke, "Reflections on the Revolution in France" (1790), republished in The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke (1899), vol. 3, p. 483.

On Election Day, I stay home. Two reasons: first of all, voting is meaningless; this country was bought and paid for a long time ago. That empty shit they shuffle around and repackage every four years doesn't mean a thing. Second, I don't vote, because I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. I know some people like to twist that around and say, "If you don't vote, you have no right to complain." But where's the logic in that? Think it through: If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and you screw things up, then you're responsible for what they've done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote—who, in fact, did not even leave the house on Election Day—am in no way responsible for what these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess you created. Which I had nothing to do with. Why can't people see that?

I have serious doubts about the value of debates in a presidential election. They tend to be a test of reaction time rather than a genuine exposition of the participants' philosophies and programs. Further, in debate, candidates tend to overstate their views. In the 1960 situation I had a very practical objection: Nixon was widely known; Kennedy was not; dramatic debates would therefore help Kennedy.

When the shadow of the Presidential and Congressional election is lifted we shall, I hope be in a better temper to legislate.

James A. Garfield, letter to General Hazen (August 1, 1867), concerning his difficulty in getting legislation passed to reduce the size of the military. Reported in The Life and Letters of James Abram Garfield (1925), vol. 1, p. 421.

Let all people come in, and vote fairly; it is to support one or the other party, to deny any man's vote.

Kin Hubbard, The Best of Kin Hubbard (1984), part 1, p. 14. The sayings of Abe Martin, Hubbard's rural sage, appeared from 1904–1930 in many newspapers.

Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man…. Because all Americans just must have the right to vote. And we are going to give them that right. All Americans must have the privileges of citizenship regardless of race. And they are going to have those privileges of citizenship regardless of race.

President Lyndon B. Johnson, "The American Promise", delivered to a joint session of Congress, March 15, 1965. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965, book 1, p. 281, 286. He was talking about the civil rights bill he was about to present to Congress.

The margin is narrow, but the responsibility is clear.

John F. Kennedy, press conference (November 10, 1963). Transcript, The New York Times (November 11, 1963), p. 20. In Theodore Sorensen's Kennedy (1965), these words are followed by "There may be difficulties with the Congress, but a margin of only one vote would still be a mandate" (p. 219).

I am of the opinion that all who can should vote for the most intelligent, honest, and conscientious men eligible to office, irrespective of former party opinions, who will endeavour to make the new constitutions and the laws passed under them as beneficial as possible to the true interests, prosperity, and liberty of all classes and conditions of the people.

Robert E. Lee, letter to General James Longstreet (October 29, 1867); in Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee (1924), p. 269.

I am superstitious. I have scarcely known a party, preceding an election, to call in help from the neighboring states, but they lost the state.

To give the victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.

Abraham Lincoln, speech (c. May 18, 1858); in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), vol. 2, p. 454. Other uses of his contrast of ballots and bullets can be found in his message to Congress of July 4, 1861, "That ballots are the rightful, and peaceful, successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be no successful appeal, back to bullets" (vol. 4, p. 439); and in a letter to James C. Conkling, August 26, 1863, "There can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet" (vol. 6, p. 410). In Arthur Brooks Lapsley, ed., The Writings of Abraham Lincoln (1905), there is a reconstruction, forty years later, of a speech to the first Republican state convention of Illinois, Bloomington, Illinois, May 29, 1856, in which this sentence appears: "Do not mistake that the ballot is stronger than the bullet" (vol. 2, p. 269). This lengthy reconstruction was not "worthy of serious consideration", in the opinion of Basler (Collected Works, vol. 2, p. 341).

I believe that there are societies in which every man may safely be admitted to vote…. I say, sir, that there are countries in which the condition of the labouring-classes is such that they may safely be intrusted with the right of electing members of the Legislature…. Universal suffrage exists in the United States without producing any very frightful consequences.

And as it is to be appropriated to this use with the consent of the State ceding it; as the State will no doubt provide in the compact for the rights, and the consent of the citizens inhabiting it; as the inhabitants will find sufficient inducements of interest to become willing parties to the cession; as they will have had their voice in the election of the Government which is to exercise authority over them; as a municipal Legislature for local purposes, derived from their own suffrages, will of course be allowed them; and as the authority of the Legislature of the State, and of the inhabitants of the ceded part of it, to concur in the cession, will be derived from the whole people of the State, in their adoption of the Constitution, every imaginable objection seems to be obviated.

George Jean Nathan, in Clifton Fadiman, The American Treasury, 1455–1955, p. 344 (1955). Reported in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989) as unverified in Nathan's works.

The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.

And we know there has been horrendous loss of life and suffering and we know that there is anger. Anyone who came anywhere near the general election in constituencies with a substantial Muslim population knows that.

Looking back, I am content. Win or lose, I have told you the truth as I see it. I have said what I meant and meant what I said. I have not done as well as I should like to have done, but I have done my best, frankly and forthrightly; no man can do more, and you are entitled to no less.

Adlai Stevenson, remarks on a radio and television broadcast summing up his presidential campaign on election eve, Chicago, Illinois (November 3, 1952); in Major Campaign Speeches of Adlai E. Stevenson, 1952 (1953), p. 315.

In countries where royalty is upheld, it is a special offence to rob the crown jewels, which are the emblems of that sovereignty before which the loyal subject bows, and it is treason to be found in adultery with the Queen, for in this way may a false heir be imposed upon the State; but in our Republic, the ballot-box is the single priceless jewel of that sovereignty which we respect, and the electoral franchise, out of which are born the rulers of a free people, is the Queen whom we are to guard against pollution.

The belief that the people of a democracy rule themselves through their elected representatives, though sanctified by tradition and made venerable by multiple repetitions, is actually mysticalnonsense. In any election, only a percentage of the people vote. Those who can't vote because of age or other disqualifications, and those who don't vote because of confusion, apathy, or disgust at a Tweedledum-Tweedledummer choice can hardly be said to have any voice in the passage of the laws which govern them. Nor can the individuals as yet unborn, who will be ruled by those laws in the future. And, out of those who do "exercise their franchise," the large minority who voted for the loser are also deprived of a voice, at least during the term of the winner they voted against.

But even the individuals who voted and who managed to pick a winner are not actually ruling themselves in any sense of the word. They voted for a man, not for the specific laws which will govern them. Even all those who had cast their ballots for the winning candidate would be hopelessly confused and divided if asked to vote on these actual laws. Nor would their representative be bound to abide by their wishes, even if it could be decided what these "collective wishes" were. And besides all this, a large percentage of the actual power of a mature democracy, such as the U.S.A., is in the hands of the tens of thousands of faceless appointed bureaucrats who are unresponsive to the will of any citizen without special pull.

Under a democratic form of government, a minority of the individuals governed select the winning candidate. The winning candidate then proceeds to decide issues largely on the basis of pressure from special-interest groups. What it actually amounts to is rule by those with political pull over those without it. Contrary to the brainwashing we have received in government-run schools, democracy—the rule of the people through their elected representatives—is a cruel hoax!

Not only is democracy mystical nonsense, it is also immoral. If one man has no right to impose his wishes on another, then ten million men have no right to impose their wishes on the one, since the initiation of force is wrong (and the assent of even the most overwhelming majority can never make it morally permissible). Opinions—even majority opinions—neither create truth nor alter facts. A lynch mob is democracy in action. So much for mob rule.